Fait accompli!

The Mom Scarf

Finally! I've completed the million-stitch Mom Scarf. It's not that I haven't enjoyed the process, but a) the pattern repeat was only four rows long, b) the pattern repeat was...basic beyond all rational belief and c) the yarn was so incredibly fiddly and pain in the left butt cheek to deal with, I'm glad to see the cast off on it.

Here's a close-up of the pattern:

It's a variation of the fan/feather pattern (see back a few entries for the pattern source, if interested.) Looks a bit like a three-legged cat track. A three-legged cat missing a toe on the back paws. Heh. The cloth is lofty and warm, soft as a baby's bottom, and has a nice drape to it. I really like it, now that it's done. Interestingly enough, Sunday is Mom's birthday, so I got the scarf done in time to do duty as a gift.

Now, don't get me wrong: I enjoyed working on a lace pattern, I really did. It's just, after a few dozen repeats (there's something like over 100 on the entire scarf) it got damnedly dull. I was dialing it in on the last fifteen inches, and it's saying something that even while dialing it in, I only had to frog back twice (again, knitting and liquor do. Not. Mix. EVAR. Not unless you like going to the frog pond.) I have a bad feeling that this particular lace pattern is now a strong muscle memory, which does not bode well for my next lace project (at this point, still TBD. I might do my autumn themed scarf/shawl in the Kidsilk Crack, or I might do the shawl/stole in my pretty green merino, or something entirely different in the red laceweight I've got stashed up. Any way I go, it's all too exciting!)

I wrapped it back in the ball band before putting it in the gift bag--primarily as the ball band has the washing instructions on it. It's so cute in the band! It even stands up on its own!

Despite the "One Skein" origins of the pattern, I actually used something more like one and a half, and it's still not 60 inches as the pattern indicates it should be. It's close enough (about 54-56) that no one's crying, especially me. The worst part is I've still got one more entire skein of this stuff! I will have to tuck it up in my acrylics yarntainer (in a baggie; it has got wool in it) until I forget what a pain it was to knit with. Maybe I'll use it for something that's just....knitted back and forth, or something. Or drop stitch something in stead of lace. Frogging back on this stuff....gah. I'm going to have flashbacks or PTSD or something from it.

Oh, well. I'm resting up from the experience tonight and going back to my Who scarf (up to about ten inches so far! Yay!) tomorrow or Saturday (we're celebrating Mom and my adopted sister's birthdays tomorrow night.) Whenever I get to it. Next week, I'm changing my work schedule to 8-5, mostly to take Dog for morning constitutionals, but also to give me more time to sleep in the mornings. Maybe getting to work after it's light will help me cope. I just have to not use it as an excuse to stay up later at night, as I do most of my True Living outside my 40 hours of financial penance a week. Sleeping more=less time to have fun and enjoy my life, which sucks. But maybe sleeping more=having more energy to enjoy the time outside work. Eh. It's a trade off.

Messy Goodness

I made something puffy and sweet and messy as all hell:

Marshmallows!

I can't have the store bought kind, because, intriguingly enough, they tend to include the Mystery Ingredient "natural flavors" (ingredients which, by law, food companies are not required to be specific about at all, and as such could be anything from corn based to soy based to bug parts; I'm not kidding on that last one, either), which makes no sense as there really only needs to be one kind of flavor in marshmallows: vanilla. The recipe I've linked to above is the one I used (half recipe, because I was warned that the full recipe makes for a blue million marshmallows) and it was really exceedingly simple. And messy. But one can't make art without getting a bit of paint on the hands, I suppose. Mmmmmm. I'm not entirely sure I did it right, but they're yummilicious, so I don't really care. The texture (which is the primary reason I doubt my candy making skillz) is more like...risen bread dough than the more dry, foamy manufactured mallows. Again, it doesn't matter, because I like the dough texture more than the foam. I mean, I really like it more than the foam. I bet they melt a treat, too. Otherwise, they taste just as vanilla-y as the generic sort, only without the chemical aftertaste. I've got some dark chocolate handy, I might have to see....[interval]
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Mmmm. *burp* Tasty.

The only adjustment I made to the recipe was the change the dusting sugar from rice flour and powdered sugar to corn starch and powdered sugar, which is what the big bag companies use. I don't have rice flour at home, and I think it would only increase the sweet factor by a lot, so I didn't think it really necessary (and it wasn't, unless you're allergic to corn, in which case, good luck finding powdered sugar in stores. You can mill your own, but what a pain in the arse.) Here's the finished product, taking a powder before storage:



Aren't they pretty?

In other, non-sugar coated news, April starts ScriptFrenzy with the folks who run NaNoWriMo. I've already signed up. No, I don't learn my lessons, but then again I am an optimist--which is why I buy lottery tickets and sign up for writing contests I'm sure not to win. Actually, I think I can do this one. I've come to accept that I simply am not a long-form writer (preferring short stories to novels, which I find interesting since I don't read short stories at all, unless they're by M. R. James, and involve wordy Victorian ghosts) and the script format satisfies both the side of me that doesn't want to write long prose and the highly visual side of my writing. I hate long prose, because I get so very frustrated trying to set the scene without repeating myself in terms of adjectives. Scripts are so much simpler, because you set up the scene in a paragraph, and you don't have to worry about being flowery or literary in style. You just describe the scene. Way easier. I can do dialogue all the live-long day, too, so it's like being told to do your math homework, but it's all the parts you're good at and none of the sucky bits (except for formatting, but I downloaded the free formatting software they linked to. I'd also imagine that eventually, it would become second nature.)

It's only 100 pages. Of dialogue. With brief scene descriptions. Too good to be true. Particularly as I've got a plot that I've been toying with for over a year--a plot, by the way, that I all along have thought would make a great movie and a terrible short story, and have been trying to figure out how to convert it to prose. How convenient. I'm quite looking forward to April. *rubs hands together in Evil Genius glee*

Light and Color

I went out tonight with Dog to use the facilities (well, he was using the facilities, I prefer to use the indoor, out-of-the-wind type facilities myself) and the light was gorgeous. We've been having soggy, wet, rainy weather lately--it's been more like spring in Scotland around here lately, which is far superior to deep winter in Saskatoon, imho--and it was the first sunlight I've seen in nearly three days. It was close to sunset, so everything was oblique, but it brought out some delicate and warm burgundy purples, the spring green of the grass, bright blues of the sky and buildings and a beautiful, toasty-gold and buttery yellow. I rushed back in after Dog finished his business, grabbed the camera and attempted a miracle:


As you can see, it didn't quite work. But I got a close up of the leathery leaves on the grass:

In real life, the purple was a lot purpleyer, and the green was not quite so dusty. Then again, maybe my screen is too bright. Anyway, the only shot I got that I liked and felt captured the mood at all was of my own private Atchafalaya:

Now I'm sort of craving gumbo. We used to have crawdads in the run-off stream that goes along our fence, I wonder if we've got some sausage and chicken....

Boy, do I feel bloated!

It's a strict yarn diet for me! I went out and got a ton of acrylic yarn for the project I keep hinting at (I want to see if it works before I go all "ooh, look what I did!" about it). I'm in a bit of a spring-cleaning mood (I am feeling rather bloated in many areas of my life right now, and am thinking I might spend part of tomorrow cleaning/tossing things out/putting things together to donate) so I think I'll get a glass of water (big one) and settle in to straightening out my stash. I've got two huge stashtainers and only two measly habits that need to be organized in them (knitting and cross stitch.) I can do it. I'm good. While I'm at it, I might as well get pictures and skein counts for my Ravelry inventory, as well as updating my needle inventory list. Why bother having a Ravelry account if I never use it? I think I avoided it before because the only reliable internet access I had before was at work, but now that I've got SuperComp here at home, I can play with Ravelry to my heart's content--because I just have nothing better to do with my free time, doncha know. *eye roll*

At least today's acquisitions were acrylic, I don't need to baggie them. Yay!

Musing

It's amazing, isn't it, the things we pick up from out of nowhere and just accept as Truth, when in reality, they are maybe only true at that second in time, or not really true at all.

I'm in mourning. I guess you could say I'm in the middle of a break up. Although...if you're the only one who's really in the relationship, does that count as a break up, or is it more the moment when you allow the illusion to shatter and see the shape of things as they really are?

Either way, it's a deeply disappointing and grieving experience, and I feel almost physically battered right now. No matter how I wish things to be otherwise, they will be what they will be, and that, my friends, is truly sad. Not for me; I can only come out of this the better for it. But.... I wish things were different. That people were different. The illusion seemed so happy (although it really was not, and in my less sentimental moments, I know it was actually quite miserable for me because I'm crap at lying to myself and know that I've known the truth for many, many years and known I was lying to myself the whole time), I still wish it was real. But it is not, and I have to let it go and find the Truth of all this. Because I'm perverse that way, that's why. I wish I were otherwise, I most sincerely do.

At least I'm finally gaining a sense of "mine" from this. My time, my money, my future. Maybe that will lead me to be a little more sensible about My things?

So it begins.

Six inches down, 234 to go.

Pray for me.

My stash is bigger than your stash.

Because holy carp, y'all, my stash is huge. I've got one last...set of yarns to order for the project I sideways mentioned in my last post (if I decide to go through with it, which I think I shall,) but then I'm going on a serious yarn diet.

The rest (well, most of the rest) of the yarn for the Whovian scarves arrived yesterday in the mails, and I've got enough wool with which to start a flock of sheep. To wit:



That's the yarn for the scarf minus the red (which is a further two skeins.) And those are 14" needles in the middle, for a sense of scale. I didn't shove those puppies all the way through the skeins, either, they're just in far enough not to fall out.

Even worse: that's the yarn for only one of the scarves. If you've been paying attention, you know I ordered yarn for two. The other scarf's yarn is in my new mini-stash-tainer:




I don't know the size, but the yarn is not smooshed in its baggies. So it's not technically as full as it could be.

Something else arrived yesterday, about the same time as my yarn.

More snow. Blech. I'm sick of this crap. I'm about ten seconds from running away to a nice, toasty beach somewhere, because, in my opinion, living in a box on a warm, sandy beach is far preferable to living in a palace in Siberia. Then again, I'm very much a summer person, so I would think that.


I guess we're not having grilled burgers tonight, then.

At least my own wee blaidd drwg is having fun. He was barking at some noisy neighbor kids in this shot. He's gotten so crabby in his middle age!

Oh, well. I best get knitting. It's not like I haven't got a lot to keep me occupied.

Oy.